Tom sent me this video, It’s long, but worth every minute. It’s about youtube, but the community aspects really resonate with us, on a 360|Flex level.
This one, I came across and sent to Tom. It speaks (through Gary’s voice) to why we do it at all. My favorite quote, which really rang true in the tech conference space, was “Listening to your users, great, but giving a shit about them, that’s huge!” That’s not verbatum, but close. And I agree. Lots of conferences and conference organizers, claim to “be community” and say they “Listen” but in my experience, that’s totally bogus. They may ask questions, but don’t seem to act on the answers, and “being community” is more about having a lot of people in attendance, but not really caring that they enjoy themselves, or that they get something out of the event.
Tom and I run 360Conferences at night, because we have to. We didn’t look at the job and think, “Well we’ve got jobs, so we can’t start this business”. We just started it, in the time we have. Sure we don’t want to keep it as a side job, we hope to pay ourselves to do what we enjoy, if not love, but in the mean time, we do what we have to do, to serve our customers and community.
Take a look at these, when you have time, the Gary V. one is only a few minutes long, so watch it now :)
What do you think?